Henbogle

Packing up

2008-03-23T07:53:00.007-04:00

Henbogle is moving!

No, we're not departing our beloved coop, we are moving Henbogle blog to WordPress. You can find the new and possibly improved blog here: http://henbogle.wordpress.com. Please come and find us!

A new snowfall record for Caribou, Maine

2008-03-21T08:32:00.004-04:00

Caribou, Maine celebrated the first day of spring by setting a new snowfall record overnight during a strong winter snowstorm. The National Weather Service reported the snowfall total at 183 inches as of last night with more snow and a blizzard warning today. For the divisionally challenged, 183 inches is 15+ feet of snow. The previous record of of 181.2 inches of snow was set in 1955.

As if this wasn't enough, yesterday Caribou set a record for the amount of snow received in one day, 10.6 inches. This breaks the previous record of 9.5 inches set in 1971.

I used a photo from the live webcam at the Crown of Maine website. Click for updated photos of downtown Caribou. More webcam images of the Aroostook area are available through the weather site Wunderground.

While I enjoyed the few years I lived in Aroostook County, I don't miss those winters at all --I'm happy with my zone 5 climate, thank-you. On the map, you'll see Caribou in very far northern Maine. I used to live in Presque Isle, just a few miles south of Caribou. I now live about a 4 1/2 hour drive south of there, not too far from Brunswick.

Hooray! Spring is here....

2008-03-20T07:33:00.005-04:00

I know it is very wintry outside today in Maine (snow sleet & freezing rain, anyone?) but the astronomical facts are clear: It is the first day of Spring! Congratulations all 'round for surviving another winter.

The bare muddy spots of yard, the muddy driveway edges, the muddy dog, the muddy chickens, all point to one thing -- Spring. I've even felt my unusually dormant gardening urge stirring to life of late -- soon, I'll have my vegetable planting list complete, and then the garden plan, and by next weekend, the seed starting cart will be set up in the laundry room (I hope.)

Enjoy the longer days, lengthening know until June, when the cycle reverses itself. I know I'll be spending as much time outside as I am able too.

More signs of spring

2008-03-17T12:36:00.007-04:00

There are ever-increasing patches of bare ground in the backyard, mostly near the sugar maple and flowering crab trees, and along the path to Henbogle coop. The snow is still thigh deep in other areas, alas.

The garden shed, surrounded by thigh-deep snow. Note the white garden gate to the left.

Dog hair from Fisher, stuffed into the gate to be available to birds for nest-building. We cleaned out the nest boxes on Sunday, and were scolded by a cheeky tufted titmouse, probably one of the 2 broods last year to be hatched in that nest box. We decided to make good by bringing out some Fisher fur saved from his last lion-look grooming.

Pippi, looking suspiciously at the camera. Is that a treat? Home sick from work with Dan's bug today, I looked out the window this morning to see Pippi out of the hen-pen, perched on the snow. On went my new boots, and I was off to catch a chicken. Fortunately, Pippi recognized the bowl in my hand as a treat container, and hop-flapped her way over to me. Back into the pen she went to share the leftover pasta with the other chooks.

Signs of spring

2008-03-16T16:55:00.009-04:00

Although it was a dreary gray day today, I saw sure signs of spring.

A pileated woodpecker busily working on the dead tree next door. (click photo to enlarge)

Tulips peeking up in the foundation bed behind the house.

Muddy boots in the muddy chicken yard.

My birthday present in action. This will be the ONLY vacuum cleaner I will ever request as a gift. It sucks up the leaves, and chops them up, ready to compost. This will be perfect in the perennial gardens, where the leaves get caught in the shrubs.

Spring is on the way....

Even green fuel can be a killer

2008-03-16T09:08:00.007-04:00

I wish I could say I was surprised, but no, I'm not. It turns out the green fuel, or bio fuel, revolution taking place here in this country isn't so green after all. As usual, it all comes down to greed. It is cheaper to dump bio fuel by-products than to dispose of them safely. The New York Times reported earlier this week on the illegal dumping of fuel production by products, including a tanker dumping glycerin in Missouri.

an anonymous caller reported [to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources] that a tanker truck was dumping milky white goop into Belle Fountain Ditch, one of the many man-made channels that drain Missouri’s Bootheel region. That substance turned out to be glycerin from a bio-diesel plant.
In January, a grand jury indicted a Missouri businessman in the discharge, which killed at least 25,000 fish and wiped out the population of fat pocketbook mussels, an endangered species.

Apparently Times Beach has receded from the memory of this Missourian, or more likely, he's the moral equivalent of W.

When I bought my car (Pontiac Vibe) in 2003, I researched extensively trying to find the best combination of fuel economy, safety, reliability and model that would meet our needs. I really debated about purchasing a diesel VW Jetta Wagon, hoping to run bio-fuel in it, but decided against it. My car at the time, a VW Golf, was only slightly more reliable than a Yugo, which did not inspire hope for reliability in the Jetta, and bio-fuel was still scarce in Maine at the time. Reading this story, I'm glad I opted for the Vibe, which gets good mileage, especially once I remove the snow tires, (35+mpg hgwy) and is utterly and completely reliable.

As for the polluters, time to make toxics dumping subject to the death penalty, and increase the fines and criminal penalties for businesses guilty of dumping, such that the business and its trustees are bankrupted. (Since my first choice is a firing squad, this seems like a compromise.)

At last, Saturday

2008-03-15T14:29:00.007-04:00

Finally, Saturday arrived after a hideously over-busy week at work. Tuesday included a lecture on atmospheric chemistry followed by a lighting demonstration. The display used an array of 100 100 watt bulbs to visually depict global energy use. Most nations use the equivalent of 40 bulbs (4,000 watts) per person; 20 bulbs – (2,000 watts) is the current world average energy use; the poorest nations, such as Eritrea, Haiti, Myanmar, Congo use 5 bulbs per person (500 watts or less). The US uses 100 bulbs per person (10,000 watts). It was interesting, and theoretically would have been visible to outer space but for heavy cloud cover.

Dan has had the flu, so I made some chicken soup Wednesday. Loaded with veggies, it hit the spot, and provided enough leftovers for him to have something nutritious to eat for the rest of the week while I was super busy at work.

Friday I collapsed after my big event, but today we went shopping at Maine Department store Reny's where I picked up an antidote to mud season --pink and green plaid boots. I am sure the chickens will be impressed; I think I'll go and show the girls the new boots now.

Chemical contaminants in Maine's wild birds

2008-03-12T11:53:00.008-04:00

Maine's Biodiversity Research Institute released results of a study yesterday which found over 190 chemical contaminants present in 23 species of birds studied across the state.

The highest level of contaminants were found in birds from the southern coastal region, but contaminants were found even in birds that feed many miles offshore and birds from more remote regions of the state.

Flame retardants (PBDEs), industrial stain and water repellants (PFCs), transformer coolants (PCBs), pesticides (OCs), and mercury were found in all 23 species of birds tested. The bird species studied live in a variety of habitats: on Maine’s ocean, salt marshes, rivers, lakes and uplands.

“This is the most extensive study of its kind to date and the first time industrial stain and water repellants were discovered in Maine birds,” says report author senior research biologist Wing Goodale.

Although there was some good news, in that the presence of banned chemicals like PCBs and DDT, are lower, overall this is sad news for Maine wildlife and Maine people.

He's a real party boy

2008-03-09T18:03:00.016-04:00

Photos from the big par-tay

A customized card from Michelle & Bill --note the power tools :-)

Wearing his new coveralls, Kyle shows off his old coveralls

King for a day

A mighty wind snuffed the 19 candles

It takes a village to raise a child, and the villagers came to the party to celebrate with cranberry punch, chocolate-orange cake, and homemade dulce de leche ice cream.

Even Ocho attended, with Bill B providing seating.

Showing off the LED flashlight in his new Swiss Army emergency pocket tool kit.

Look at that grin!

Kyle hugging his dad after Dan's toast to Kyle

Happy Birthday Kyle!

2008-03-08T07:59:00.010-05:00

Kyle at age 1 --look at that strawberry blonde hair.

Kyle in our wedding party (far right) at age 11

Kyle with Dan vacationing on Cape Breton, age 12

Kyle age 12, the second winter in the house, when we got 18" of snow over Christmas

Kyle with an eel he caught in the Kennebec River at the town landing, age 13

Kyle with his new mountain bike at Christmas, age 13

Pastry Chef Kyle, making Christmas cookies, age 13

With the final product

Kyle ice fishing, age 15

Kyle age 16, with birthday chainsaw from his mother, modeling his safety gear from Dan and I

Kyle age 16, with the 1972 John Deere snowmobile he refurbished

Age 17

Kyle in Dan's kayak, age 17

Kyle in his new kayak, age 17

Happy 18th birthday! We love you!!

Look for more photos tomorrow after the party.

Feed the bugs, and the birds will thrive

2008-03-06T07:22:00.002-05:00

I just read about an interesting new book in the NY Times, written by a University of Delaware entomologist Douglas Tallamy. Bringing Nature Home outlines the native plants needed to provide habitat for native insects that native birds depend upon for survival. It looks like a good resource for gardeners.

Wintry mix

2008-03-06T06:54:00.003-05:00

The remnants of Wednesday's storm. I heard this morning that more is on the way for Friday night and Saturday.

Yet more wintry mix

2008-03-05T21:54:00.003-05:00

Another school cancellation for Dan today, the result of an overnight snow/sleet/rain/freezing rain storm that left a thick layer of ice everywhere, and had people scrambling to get roofs shoveled and or inspected. At least 2 schools in Maine have canceled classes due to concerns about roof snow loads. (Don't get me started on the topic of flat-roofed buildings in snow country.)

Will this winter ever end? I'm finding it really hard to get motivated to get garden planning, even though I should be planting peppers and onions right now.

Pizza

2008-03-02T21:01:00.003-05:00

Saturday's pizza was so good, I made more today. The microhood works great, I didn't set the smoke detectors off yesterday or today. Whoo hoo!

Pesto Potato with Parmesan

Another Pesto Potato, Artichoke Hearts and Roasted Red Pepper, and Linguica Sausage

Pesto and Parmesan.

Sunday Snow Report

2008-03-02T20:29:00.007-05:00

We never did get a snowfall total for the March 1 storm. By the time the snow slowed down, it was 40°F and the snow had significantly compacted into a sodden, heavy mass. It snowed all day, though, slowing considerably late in the day, but flakes were still drifting down when our friends Bill and Michelle headed home post-pizza a little after 9 pm.

We shoveled in the afternoon Saturday, enough to get by, and today in the sunshine, batted clean-up. There was a chilly breeze, but the March sun really warmed things up. Spring is clearly on the way, snowstorms be damned.

The girls were very happy to have the snow removed from the yard around Henbogle coop, and even happier to see the big plate of leftover pasta, fried rice, and aging spinach we brought.

We have a LOT of snow. Temps today and yesterday were in the high 30°-40° F and the snow is melting quickly but it is still amazingly deep even in the yard. We've given up shoveling the deck off, we have no where to put the snow. We just keep a path to the door cleared.

In the photos on the left above and to the right, this is the path between the 2 new garden beds I planted last summer. Hard to imagine now, isn't it?

In the front yard, Dan is atop the snow filling the front yard feeder, which normally is level with his head. The snow he is standing on is another lovely perennial garden, buried under 3 feet of snow.

We noticed that the heavy snowbanks have snapped several of the lower branches off the spruce in the front yard (you can see a few of the branches framing Dan in the photo). That tree gives the front yard some privacy, and more importantly, shields the house from the glare of the streetlight. I hope that we don't lose too many more branches from this poor tree. I sure hope this is the last big snow of the season.

In like a lion

2008-03-01T09:16:00.008-05:00

Here's hoping the old adage about March is true, in like a lion, out like a lamb, as here at Henbogle it is snowing hard at 8:50 am, and the NWS forecast is calling for 5-9 additional inches today atop the 3" or so that fell overnight. Sigh. I am so DONE with winter and snow, but apparently the message has yet to be received by the weather gods. The snowy winter is really feeding my unreasonable longing for a greenhouse.

The girls are out in the hendome. They weren't too happy about the snow on the ground, but the lure of treats was too strong to resist. The other day Dan came upon a bale of hay fallen from a truck, and stopped to bring it home for the girls. He threw the bale in the dome and they are in hen heaven. We'd intended to stop by the feed store and buy a bale Sunday, but mis-timed it and the store was closed, so the girls had to do without. Scratching through the bale and eating the seeds gives them something to do and keeps them happy. This morning I threw a couple of handfuls of scratch into the hay and they'll be occupied happily for some time.

On my way back to the house I refilled all the bird feeders. I'd say at this point we've gone through about 125 lbs of sunflower seed, and 15 lbs of thistle seed. It is money well spent, feeder bird watching is more entertaining than cable tv anyday. I find the upside down finch feeder especially amusing. Some of the finches, and even a few chickadees, figure it out right away, but there are always a few who never do get the idea.

Well, time to make some pizza dough, I think tonight will be an excellent night for a big pizza feed. As I nearly always manage to set the smoke detectors off when I make pizza, it's time to test out the new microhood and see how good a job of smoke removal it does. Once I get the dough made, it will be time to buckle down and make some decisions about what seeds I will be ordering. I've been a quivering blob of indecision, but it is more than time to get off the pot, as they say, or I'll be SOL when order fulfillment time comes around!

Good Maine Cooking

2008-02-27T08:38:00.014-05:00

Mainers are a thrifty lot, savers extraordinaire and experts at reinventing uses for old equipment. The infamous toilet lawn planter springs to mind, although equally thrifty would be the reuse of old cast iron-porcelain bathtubs as livestock waterers. My former landlord in Greenville, Lonnie Rowe, used an old delivery van as a chicken coop, and made wildlife watching perches out of old tractor seats set on pipes in the ground.

This thriftiness transfers into the food category, too. Chicken and turkey carcasses become stock, meat scraps go in the freezer to become soup. Of course, poultry owners have a ready source of birds to productively dispose of every scrap of food. And should you trap a big old coon or a give terminal lead poisoning to a pesky groundhog, well, there's good eating if you know how to prepare it properly.

For my birthday earlier this month, Dan found a great old-time recipe book for me, All Maine Recipes, published by the Courier Gazette of Rockland in the late 1960s. It is chock-full of good Maine recipes, many for game such as venison or pheasant, with some modern ones, too, with many variations of the Jello salad --shudder. (I even found a recipe from my long-ago landlady Irene Yerxa of Bridgewater, Maine, and Dan saw a recipe from a woman he knew in Waldoboro, Athlene Damon. Maine is a small town spread over a big state.)

And there are several recipes for preparing garden-chomping rabbit, raccoon and woodchuck.

It is good to know I have a resource handy for preparing varmint should the opportunity arise. You just never know.

Photos for Mom

2008-02-25T19:44:00.004-05:00

By request, more photos of the kitchen project. Next up, some old-time Maine recipes....

Project completed

2008-02-22T15:23:00.008-05:00

At 3:20 pm today, we finished our microhood installation project. In the end, we decided to wait on the Green man mosaic, simply because making a mosaic is the kind of project that just cannot be rushed, and we really wanted to finish this project (there are way too many unfinished or un-started projects awaiting to leave this one in limbo).

We can continue to think about and look for tile and design ideas for the mosaic project, but in the meantime, I think the completed panel looks great. We painted the panel with some metallic hammered-finished paint we had used before. In this iteration it doesn't look hammered, but I like the color and sheen.

We decided to use oak molding to frame the green man and the panel to make it look more finished. The Green man is secured with velcro, and the molding also helps hold him in place to prevent a tragic accident.

Today we also installed some red oak molding on the existing white oak cabinets, which obscures some paint splooges and other old-house related problems, and makes the mixing of red and white oak look a bit more intentional. I think it looks great, and I feel like other than the ugly tile backsplash, I have a fabulous, highly functional kitchen.

Since buying the house in December 2000, we have completed the following kitchen projects:

painted the walls a combination of green (Behr Fox Hollow) and taupe (Behr Beaverwood)
installed a new dishwasher and built a cabinet surround for it
moved the countertop over the dishwasher and built a granite tile counter insert
replaced the now-leaking kitchen faucet (grrr)
installed stereo speakers
replaced 3 light fixtures
installed new picture window overlooking the backyard
added shelves to the kitchen cabinet
added an outlet to the pantry
re-built cabinet from the bathroom and moved it to the kitchen (to the right of the microhood)
added outlets for the microhood and range
made/installed beach stone drawer pulls

No wonder I love my kitchen!!

Hanging the tea cabinet

2008-02-21T08:01:00.012-05:00

After several coats of latex polyurethane, yesterday we hung the tea cabinet. It fit exactly into the narrow space between the glassware cabinet and microhood. No sooner was it in before I was sliding the tea canisters into the shelves and moving Goldeneye the Rooster (a long ago gift from a friend) to his new home. We cut the last piece of cabinet which will hide the outlet/cord and prepared to install it.

Then Dan had an idea.

Rather than just paint the panel, we could make a ceramic tile mural --our version of 1% for art. Here in Maine all new school construction requires that 1% of the total building cost be spent on art for the building --a great idea, (especially since some communities are so cheap I think they'd prefer to return to the days of the 1-room schoolhouse.)

The crazy thing? We already have this gorgeous bas relief ceramic tile of a Greenman which we could use in the mosiac. We found it while on vacation one summer and loved it so we purchased it with an eye to including it in the kitchen somewhere; probably when we finally rid our kitchen of the world's ugliest tile backsplash.

So, now we are playing with the idea of a mosaic, using ceramic tile we have on hand purchased from tag sales with the original idea of making mosaic hypertufa items. Since Dan is the artist in the family and he has never made a mosaic before and I can barely draw a diagram of the garden, let alone produce artwork, this will be challenging, but fun.

We will play around with the concept and see what happens.

The tea cabinet

2008-02-19T20:44:00.011-05:00

Today we constructed the tea cabinet, which will fit on the left of the microhood and is a narrow cabinet which I plan to use to store canisters of various teas. We realized the cabinet needed to be installed prior to installing the remove-able back of the above microhood shelf so we can install a cleat on the tea cabinet to hold the back in position.

Much careful measuring ensued, but we still cut the back of the tea cabinet incorrectly on the first try. We subtracted the width of the cabinet sides twice, grr, leading to the cabinet back being cut one inch too narrow. The second time we were dead on, though. The cabinet went together pretty quickly. We discovered veneer edging on some past project, and put it too good use here covering the exposed plywood edges. The veneer is a huge timesaver, it is covered with a heat sensitive adhesive, you use an ordinary household iron to attach the veneer, let it set, then trim the veneer to fit. Amazing! What takes longer is covering it all with several coats of polyurethane --very tedious.

The cabinet is made from red oak plywood, as white oak plywood, so popular 25 years ago, was nowhere to be found. It won't match the existing cabinets exactly, but we hope with the addition of some red oak molding here and there, it will look planned. Probably not, but it will be the cabinetry equivalent of plaid, my favorite color, so it will work for me.

With luck and perseverance, we should be able to hang the cabinet and put in the back wall tomorrow.

The new microwave, BTW, works great, heating things much faster than the old one, and more quietly, too. The fan feature of the vent is quiet, but I haven't given it a real workout yet -- I foresee some sauteed garlic and onions on the menu soon.

Halfway finished -- hood installed

2008-02-18T18:38:00.007-05:00

Although as we looked into starting the project, we thought it would be tediously fiddly, in the end, installing the microhood wasn't so bad.

As we looked it over, we realized that this model of hood is designed to sit flush against the wall; the power cord emerges from the top of the machine and plugs into an outlet placed above the machine. Hmm, that was a problem.

Behind that particular wall are the stairs, which made placing the outlet, done a year or so ago, very tricky. The outlet was not moving. Thus we decided to build a chase to give us room to plug the microhood into the outlet. We found the studs -- never quite where you'd expect them to be in an old house -- and screwed 2x4s onto the studs over the drywall after removing 2 rows of the world's ugliest ceramic tile backsplash.

We cut a piece of remnant 3/4 inch plywood left in inventory from a previous project to go over the 2x4s. The microhood would hang from this, so we wanted sturdy 3/4' plywood securely attached to the wall. This left a gap of about 1 1/2" between the plywood and the drywall.

We also had to build a shelf from which the microhood would be bolted into position. The shelf had to be pre-drilled with holes for the bolts and an access hole for the power cord to snake through. Dan handily cut the plywood with a circular saw, and we screwed the plywood on with large, heavy wood screws and plenty of them.

Next, we attached the bracket which would support the microhood. Then the microhood was set onto the bracket --no photos since it took both of us to manage that. I held it in position while Dan secured the bolts and snaked the cord through the access. Ta daaaaa, it is installed. Dan removed the plastic and plugged it in --lights, power, fan!.

Tomorrow we install a false back to hide the outlet, and begin work on the narrow tea cabinet planned for the left side of the microhood.

Project week: Installing a microhood

2008-02-17T09:16:00.008-05:00

If it is a school vacation week, and it is too cold for gardening, then it must be time for an old-house project, as heaven knows, we have oodles of them. This week's project is constructing a cabinet and installing a microwave-range hood above the range, and in the process, hiding 2 more rows of the ugly tile backsplash (3 cheers!).

Our cape is from the 1800s, and is the classic New England cape with an el with an el with a barn. In other words, if we had livestock, I could get to the barn from the house in my slippers to milk the cows --no need to go outside. Over the years, the interior of the house has been changed many times (staircases moved and added, pesky load-bearing walls removed, indoor plumbing added.) At some point in the past, our kitchen was moved to el #1, modern(ish) plumbing was added, and in the more recent past, custom oak cabinets were built and installed by the previous owner. They are high quality solid wood cabinets and I can't foresee ever replacing them (unless I win the lottery and then I might consider custom built solid cherry cabinets with a natural oil finish --not that I've thought about it.) The upper cabinets are open, however, and this leads to my love-hate relationship with the cabinets.

I love the open cabinets, but hate the fact that the contents get slightly greasy and dusty from cooking, because the kitchen does not have a vent. Since the delicious aroma of caramelizing onion or sauteed garlic isn't being whisked away, the air carrying the aroma molecules eventually leaves an greasy residue on the adjacent surfaces. As my loathing of scrubbing is well-documented, this must stop.

After 7 years of bitching about it, this week we are installing a vent. We first planned to install only a vent, but then saw my pal Holly's nifty microhood when she built her kitchen, and realized we too could install a microhood and free-up some counter space at the same time. More room for clutter, yay!

For now it will be a recirculating fan with 2 grease-trapping filters, but someday in the future we hope to run the vent out of the house through an exterior wall --just not while it is 15° F outside. So, let the fun begin, and forgive me if I am slow to post -- I'll be up to my elbows in cabinet construction.

Excellent award --who, me?

2008-02-16T23:02:00.002-05:00

Thanks Laura at Urban Hennery for passing on an E is for Excellent Award to me! I am honored to be included in the ranks of so many other bloggers who have been named excellent by their readers. I need to similarly recognize 10 other bloggers whom I feel are excellent (which will be challenging since of course Urban Hennery is one of the ones I would have named), so I'll be working on this over the next few days, in the midst of the big vacation project!

A fine theme song for freecycling

2008-02-15T12:40:00.003-05:00

Theme song from Sandford & Son

Although, consider this a warning: if you are one of those people who frequently finds a musical phrase stuck in their heads, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS!

I've been humming this little melody for 3 solid says. Quincy Jones, the composer, clearly has an evil streak.

Wet and wintry Wednesday

2008-02-13T20:11:00.005-05:00

Yet another snowstorm dumped 8 inches of snow here at Henbogle overnight before the freezing rain, then rain, then freezing rain, created a wet, slushy mess. Schools and businesses statewide were closed, and even my campus sent staff home early due to the slippery roads and threat of late day freezing.

I was able to work from home today, and while I was on a telephone meeting in the morning, Dan shoveled and used our new roof rake to clean snow off the roof in the ice dam zone. The poor feller was soaked through by the time he finished.

Once I was off the phone, Dan called in to a conference call about the statewide 7th and 8th grade computer program. (In Maine, every 7th & 8th grade student has a Mac iBook computer.) Love it or hate it (and I mostly love it) technology has radically changed the way we work. I for one LOVE being able to work from home on days like today.

Dump picking, or rather freecycling

2008-02-12T13:29:00.001-05:00

Garden Girlie posted recently about a freecycled shelving unit she found and will be using in her garden to start seeds, etc. Whilst driving somewhere with her hubby, she pulled over to collect it, plucking it from the very jaws of dumpsterdom, and is giving it a new lease on life. I love that.

Dan and I have a long history of freecycling, to use a more PC term. Back in the day, we'd call it dump picking, but the dump days are over, and recycling center picking just doesn't have that ring of authenticity. Semantics aside, we have a long and storied history of screeching to a halt to collect one man's trash and put it to good use. Our garden sink, for example. Our magnificent seed-starting cart, rescued from a grocery store dumpster by my gallant and thrifty spouse, the wire garden fencing rescued from the scrap-metal pile. Then there are the fabulous antique side windows Dan found by the side of the road, and the cement mixer (not free but darn close).

I've written about this before, but now I'm wondering: How many others are there like me, unafraid to screech to a roadside halt and turn trash into treasure?

A visit from Holly

2008-02-10T18:41:00.001-05:00

My pal Holly, yes, the newly-wed Holly, came to visit this weekend, arriving Friday evening after the snowstorm, and leaving Sunday after Saturday night's snowstorm.

She and Dan greeted me at the door with a margarita after my harrowing drive home, in which I narrowly missed being squashed between 2 SUVs in a 20-car pileup on the highway. Fortunately, I knew a back way home, and after 45 minutes of inching 2 miles along, I exited and took a back road and avoided the hours of waiting for traffic to clear.

We had a quiet weekend, what with all the snow, but had lots of fun cooking (apricot ginger scones), playing cards, a church supper with friends and more cards, and lots of laughter. Our new, larger tent had arrived, and Holly helped us set it up and check it out -- after all, only 37 more days until spring! Plans call for a joint camping trip somewhere with Holly and Dave next summer.

The new tent is big. It has a bit more floor space than my trusty 20+ year old Eureka (99x80 vs 90x60) and a lot more headroom. I think we could fit the old Eureka inside. I wish the new tent had mesh doors with a zip up cover like my Eureka tent did, but it is a nice neutral color. The thought of spending a rainy day in an orange and yellow tent is enough to make me take up drinking, so the soothing pale gray and navy of the new tent look good. Another reason to be counting the days until spring....

2008-02-08T14:43:00.000-05:00

This
Afternoon

Snow
Likely
Hi 27°F

Tonight

Snow
Likely
Lo 16°F

Saturday

Chance
Snow
Hi 34°F

Saturday
Night

Snow

Lo 22°F

Sunday

Snow
Likely
Hi 33°F

Sunday
Night

Slight Chc
Snow
Lo 12°F

Monday

Mostly
Sunny
Hi 30°F

Monday
Night

Mostly
Clear
Lo 10°F

Tuesday

Chance
Snow
Hi 27°F

What is wrong with this picture?

Spring is a mere 40 days away, that is what's wrong with this picture. Enough, already! The chickens are not happy with all this snow, and frankly, neither am I.

By request: Roasted Cauliflower Veggie Soup

2008-02-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

1 head cauliflower
3 garlic cloves
2 medium onions, cut in wedges
3 T olive oil
I carrot, grated
1 celery stalk, thinly sliced
1 waxy potato, washed and grated
3 c broth or water
½ t crushed dried thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
2 cream, or to taste
hefty grind of black pepper
salt to taste

To roast the cauliflower:
Cut cauliflower into same-sized florets. Toss cauliflower, garlic, and onions with 2T oil to coat and roast in middle of 425°F oven until brown and caramelized, stirring frequently during the latter part of the roasting. Can be made in advance and refrigerated until needed.

In a soup pot, sauté the celery, carrot and potato in 1T oil until tender. Add broth, water, roasted cauliflower mixture, and herbs and simmer for 30 minutes, or until cauliflower is very tender. Discard bay leaf and puree in blender (or you could skip this step if you cut the cauliflower smaller). Return soup to pot and stir in cream, salt and pepper to taste. Heat through and serve.

I make it a little differently every time. I rarely have cream on hand, so often use half and half. Evaporated milk will work, too. A little cheddar tastes great melted in and it would probably be gorgeous topped with a big slice of bread and cheese and broiled, French onion soup style.

Birthday girls

2008-02-04T06:56:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to us!

February was a busy month for the Elliott and Tompkins family hospitals. My birthay is February 3, Dan's sister Louise's birthday is today, Dan's Mom's birthday is tomorrow, and Dan's niece Marriane is also a February baby.

Yesterday I enjoyed a lovely birthday party at our friends Karen's and Bill's home, with our other friends Bill and Michelle in attendance. Karen as usual outdid herself with a delicious cake and sparkling beverages; friendship sweetened the afternoon even more. Thanks to all for a great day, and happy Birthday, Mom, Louise and Marianne!

Camping fools

2008-02-03T08:50:00.000-05:00

We've booked our campsite at the gorgeous and remote Cobscook Bay State Park for next summer. Reservations opened on Friday, so I promptly booked a campsite on Cobscook Point, overlooking Whiting Bay, and then booked Antonio for house-sitting. The photo is of the view from our campsite --nice, huh? Where else can you spend 8 nights directly on the water for less than the cost of one night at a Hampton Inn?

We'll be camping in style, too, with a tent upgrade from my well-loved 20+ year old
Alpine Meadows tent, seen on the right from last summer. We've ordered a spacious new 4-person tent, so there will be plenty of room for our queen-size air mattress inside.

After a day spent wedged in my kayak, or hiking the Bold Coast Trail, I want to stretch out and relax in comfort. I've earned that air mattress after years of the wafer-thin closed-cell foam sleeping pads and a wadded-up fleece jacket for a pillow. With our screen tent and the new tent, we'll be camping in 5-star style, and I can hardly wait.

What we are eating, part 2

2008-02-02T20:14:00.000-05:00

When last we checked, we'd enjoyed grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner on Wednesday evening. Later that evening, I roasted up some cauliflower with garlic and onion to use for soup the next day. Here's how we used all those groceries during the remainder of the week.

Thursday
B: homemade muesli with yogurt, (milk for Dan), coffee,
L: sliced meatball sandwiches, oranges
D: roasted cauliflower soup with root vegetables

Friday
B: Henbogle eggs and toast, coffee
L: Ali, lunch meeting on campus, Dan soup, oranges
D: Pasta with meatballs and red sauce redux (and boy was I sad to see the last of the meatballs and sauce!)

Saturday
B: yogurt, toast, coffee
L: leftover cauliflower soup, white bean salad with green beans and tuna
D: freezer meal of pork chops with whiskey cranberry sauce, pan blackened Brussels sprouts, bread

One of the things I noticed about the Hungry Planet photo series was how ubiquitous soft drinks have become. Dan and I rarely buy soft drinks, treating soft drinks as party fare. We are very fortunate to live in a town with great-tasting, non-chlorinated, non-fluoridated tap water --our town won the statewide drinking water taste test this year -- we drink water with every meal, and we even bring it with us to work and on our travels. I'm sure that cuts down considerably on our grocery expenditures.

As you can see, I plan on using leftovers for lunches whenever possible, and we will often see a meal re-created into something else later on in the week. We used only a small portion of many of our grocery purchases for last week -- we will need to purchase a few items such as coffee, coffee filters, milk, canned beans, and some fruit but that's about all. There are meatballs in the freezer, I'll cook a pork roast tomorrow for sandwiches and other meals this week, and we'll no doubt have a meal of soup one night, too.

It is work to prepare meals from whole ingredients, but with practice, it gets easier and it is work that feels right. Preparing delicious meals is well worth the time invested. Dan plays an important role in the process, too. I cook, he cleans. When I arrive home from work (usually after Dan) any breakfast mess is cleaned up and the kitchen is ready for me to cook, and after dinner, he loads the dishwasher and does the rest of the cleanup detail. It's a great system!

Too many tomatoes

2008-01-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

Although we ate some fresh garden tomatoes, and canned 11+ quarts of tomato sauce, 2007 was not a great year for tomatoes in our garden. We had a cool wet spring, and a cool (delightful, really, in human comfort terms) summer, and our tomatoes didn't really take off until August, with production peaking in September, just in time for back to campus and the craziness that brings.

Of course, part of the reason for the low productivity is our decision to go away on vacation, and while gone, neglect our pruning and staking duties, which resulted in a giant green jungle. Hoping to increase our tomato yield through a little healthy competition, Dan and I have agreed to a tomato-growing contest this summer (his idea, I might add). While we still have to work out all the details, we've decided we'll grow the same varieties, starting the seeds together, etc., but once we determine a planting date, it is every woman for herself. I'm now immersed in perusing the 'net and my stash of gardening catalogs, trying to come up with the list of varieties we'll grow.

Potential varieties:
Sungold cherries (these babies are a definite)
Amish Paste*
Orange Banana*
Brandywine
Ruby Pearl
Green Zebra
Opalka+
Milano Paste+
Debarao+

The tomatoes marked with an asterisk* I grew last year, and in general was very happy with; but notice the plus mark+ beside Debarao and Milano? These are 2 new paste varieties I'm considering, because they are much earlier than the Amish Pastes or Orange Bananas. I saw the Milano Plum in the John Scheepers Kitchen Gardeners catalog, $2.95 for 50 seeds. Milanos are hybrid determinate types, ready in an astonishing 60-65 days.

The Debrarao were recommended by my friend Holly's go to organic gardening source, Dan Pratt of Astarte Farm in Hadley, MA and are ready in 72 days. Seeds are available from Johnny's $2.95 for 40 seeds.

Another gardening crony recommended Opalka (82 days) tomatoes from Pine Tree Garden Seeds, saying they beat the Amish Pastes by a country mile for taste, few seeds, and thin, tender skin. Of course, they are not early. And then there are Grandma Mary's Paste (68 days), but there is no mention of flavor in the notoriously wordy Fedco catalog, hmmm. As I said, I was happy with the Amish Paste (85 days) and the Orange Bananas (85 days), but now I'm dithering and these are only the paste varieties! What is a gardener to do? Suggestions are welcome.

What we are eating

2008-01-30T09:38:00.000-05:00

Remember all those groceries? Well, here's what we've been eating this week. (Sorry for the lack of photos, I'll try and remember to snap some photos for the remainder of the week.)

Friday night
Grilled kielbasa and onions with Raye's Winter Garden Mustard on the whole wheat rolls. (Kielbasa from a local-to-my-friend-Holly smokehouse in Western Massachusetts)

Saturday
B: Eggs, whole wheat rolls, grape jelly, grape juice, coffee
L: Leftover pasta with peas, onions and cabbage from Thursday night
D: Tortilla chips and guacamole, squash enchiladas, Mexican rice, brownies

Sunday:
B: Yogurt, fruit, toast, coffee
L: Mexican rice casserole (leftovers re-vamped with beans, corn, cheese)
D: -- light snack and dinner with friends

Monday
B: fruit smoothies
L: leftover squash enchiladas, oranges
D: pasta with meatballs, spinach salad

Tuesday
B: oatmeal, fruit, coffee
L: Ali, soup pot-luck on campus, Dan leftover Mexican rice casserole, oranges
D: Pasta with Maine shrimp & peas, mixed broccoli/cauliflower

Wednesday:
B: cereal with peanut butter toast, coffee
L: Ali, lunch meeting on campus, Dan leftover meatballs & pasta with broccoli/cauliflower, oranges
D: Grilled Cabot cheddar cheese sandwiches with Raye's mustard, pickled beets, bread 'n butter pickles

What's on tap for the rest of the week? Hmmm I'd better get to work roasting some cauliflower!

Egregious greenwashing

2008-01-28T21:55:00.001-05:00

This story of the Bath, Maine McDonald's and their new-found commitment to recycling really frosted my cake. In my mind, the real story is that they have only recently begun to recycle, and that leads me to question how many other restaurants, or any businesses for that matter, are not recycling and at what cost to local communities?

So far, Fraser [the manager] said, only about 10 percent of the customers have caught on. But behind the counter — where store employees recycle storage containers, egg crates and plastic pickle boxes, among other things — the effort has cut the restaurant's total garbage output in half.

"Before we started recycling, we had 16 cubic yards of trash per week," he said. "Now we're down to eight."

At eight cubic yards of trash per week, in one year that's 416 cubic yards just for this one McDonald's Restaurant. Kudos to the manager for getting the program started -- he deserves a lot of credit for bucking the status quo -- but how is it that no one figured this out before?

I'm appalled that the Times Record covered this as a news story (page 3) and didn't ask a few challenging questions. A news story covering America's/McDonalds meaty habits can be found in today's NY Times. Mark Bittman, a food writer, did a great job with the story, raising really important issues facing the country and our apparently insatiable desire for inexpensive meat. Yeah, that's right, a food writer. Sheesh.

Is that a chicken?

2008-01-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

I swear the gentleman on the left in this photo, from the What the World Eats photo series, is holding a chicken.

What we eat

2008-01-26T08:45:00.000-05:00

Regular readers of this blog know I think about food a lot. Growing food, buying food, cooking food, eating food, writing about food, food politics, etc., food is almost always on my mind.

The photo essay about family food purchasing around the globe really caught my interest. (Quite possibly because it give me something to think about other than work these days, the stress of which is causing to me chew on my pillowcase in my sleep.) So I decided to post my own photo with list and notes.

I'm a big proponent of buying locally, but this is an area I really struggle with during the Maine winter (this morning's 8°F temp is not veggie friendly, at least until I get one of these). With just 2 of us at home now, a winter share at our local CSA farm is just too much food, especially of food that Dan and I are, shall we say, learning to appreciate more, like kale. So, what we don't have in storage from our garden or local farmstand purchases, I purchase at a grocery store like most other Americans. This week, I spent $160 on that food. My purchases:

- 1 Empire sweet onion
- 2 avocadoes
- 3 heads garlic
- ½ lb piece ginger root
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 4 lbs yellow onions
- 1 bunch celery
- 1 head cauliflower
- 5 lbs organic carrots
- 1 lb spinach
- 2 lbs parsnips
- 3 lbs butternut squash
- 3 lbs 80% lean ground beef
- 1 lb Cabot pepperjack cheese
- 1 lb parmesan cheese
- ½ gallon whole milk (for yogurt)
- ½ lb half 'n half
- 8 oz sour cream
- 1 lb coffee
- 2 lb bag blue tortilla chips
- 2 lbs (36) corn tortillas
- 2 bxs Ghiradelli brownie mix
- 3 lbs old fashioned rolled oats
- 2 lbs honey
- 16 oz can cannellini beans
- 16 oz natural peanut butter
- 5 oz tomato paste in a tube (Italy)
- ½ lbs sea salt (France)
- 4 whole-wheat rolls
- 2 ltrs extra virgin olive oil (Italy)
- 1 bottle wine
- 12 bottles microbrew beer

Unless noted, all items are produced domestically, and some are organically produced. I usually have a few meals in mind when I grocery shop, but my primary method is to have a well-stocked pantry that allows me to be 1) inspired and have on hand what I need, or 2) uninspired and in a big hurry, and to have the makings of a quick, nutritious and from scratch meal.

Of course, I was in a rush at the grocery store, and forgot a couple of things --some dried pasta for the pantry, frozen peas, vegetable broth, and black beans. I also plan to stop at the Co-op in a nearby town for yogurt culture, pepitas, whole wheat flour and some herbs and spices. All those items will add another $25 - $30 to the list, I suspect.

What will all those items become, meal-wise? Dinners will include a big Mexican feed tonight (with company for dinner), shrimp chowder (with Maine shrimp from the freezer), squash soup and/or squash enchiladas, meatballs with tomato sauce and pasta or (for Dan, his favorite) meatloaf with potatoes, roasted cauliflower soup. Spinach salad, carrots, parsnips, squash will all be seen as vegetable sides. Lunches will primarily be leftover dinner. Breakfasts will include fruit from the freezer in smoothies, oatmeal, or, you guessed it, Henbogle eggs. There may well be a quiche or eggs for dinner some night, too. Brownies are always on hand for company or a chocolate emergency. We will make bread from flour and yeast on hand, and other pantry staples like rice and potatoes will also find their way into this week's meals.

You'll notice there are few pre-packaged foods, and that is not unusual. I did not have macaroni and cheese from a box until I went to college (boy, was cafeteria food in the mid-80s an unpleasant surprise!) and I learned to cook from my mother. Dinner at our house started as ingredients, and I've cooked that way pretty much ever since, although I will say Annie's macaroni and cheese and Classico (no corn syrup added) spaghetti sauce have been seen in my pantry. Since then I've discovered roma tomatoes heated on the stove with olive oil and garlic is better tomato sauce, and Kyle is not here as often to inhale the Annie's mac and cheese (and much else) from the pantry. I do purchase some treats from Trader Joe's when I get the chance, namely their ethnic sauces or my big weakness, TJ's tuna in curry sauce (YUM YUM YUM).

Many years ago now, a new-ish friend was at my home, and looked in the pantry and asked me where all the food was (huh?) I didn't really understand at the time that she meant where were all the cans of soup, boxes of mac n cheese, jars of spaghetti sauce, etc.? I was not enlightened enough to know then that the way I cook was not typical, and sadly, is becoming less so all the time.

A look at food budgets around the globe

2008-01-21T15:49:00.000-05:00

The Slow Cook recently wrote about this interesting look at weekly food purchases around the world. The photo series was originally published in a book by Peter Menzel, The Hungry Planet . It was really interesting to look at what folks purchased and spent on food. It was astonishing to see the amount of processed and fast food (how depressing to see Tony the Tiger in Italy!) and sobering to see what the family in the refugee camp in Chad survives upon. I'm counting my many blessings right now.

Links to the additional pages: Part II, Part III

A good day for soup

2008-01-20T19:31:00.000-05:00

The skies were clear here at Henbogle today, setting us up nicely for a big plunge in temperature, when the forecast is for a low of 3ºF overnight. The high today was in the mid 20sºF, but with a perky little breeze --perfect soup weather.

I've got a strong tendency to stockpile items like food, building materials, fabric, garden tools. The other day, when making room in the freezer for our pork delivery, I realized that I need to actually use all the food I have so carefully laid away (so far we've only cracked open 2 jars of tomato sauce, and a 3-4 of grape juice). In six months, I hope to be picking more strawberries and harvesting lettuce from the garden. It was high time to use those freezer veggies, so I stirred together a big batch of minestrone soup.

I had made a big batch of stock from one of our delicious freezer chickens the other day, so I sauteed some onions, added some carrots, celery, garlic, then the stock, potatoes, cannelini beans, cabbage, and from our freezer, swiss chard, wax beans, green beans, corn and pesto. With some homemade garlic croutons and warm from the oven ginger bread for dessert, I can almost forget the plunging temperatures. For a little while.

Cloning is just creepy

2008-01-19T17:56:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, the FDA determined food derived from cloned livestock is safe. More than ever, am I glad my freezer is full of locally, humanely raised chicken, lamb and pork (and strawberries, greenbeans, corn and swiss chard. And yes, I know it needs defrosting.)

I don't know why the idea of cloned meat is so creepy -- after all, we clone plants (also known as propagation from cuttings) all the time. The idea of cloning animals for meat production, though, is just too Soylent Green for me to be comfortable with it, and I am concerned for the poor unfortunate animals whose cloning experience was unsuccessful. Dolly the sheep had multiple health issues which may --or may not -- have been linked to her cloned status, and birth defects are common in cloned animals.

Part of my unease stems from the FDA itself. After all, the FDA's record of late could use a little beefing up -- Vioxx and Avandia spring to mind.

All in all, this just gives me yet another reason to stay out of the supermarkets. We just received a yummy stash of porcine splendor from my pal who raised 2 pigs in his backyard. I'm really looking forward to pork chops, made the old-fashioned way.

Chickens caught sneezing by papparazi

2008-01-15T08:03:00.000-05:00

Meg over at FutureHouse Farm posted the funniest photos of one of her hen's sneezing that I had to link to it. BTW, Meg's chickens are a similar cross to our Hubbards Golden Comet Chickens, notice how similar they look.

Snowed In

2008-01-15T07:46:00.000-05:00

Hyacinth, Poppy and Iris (who should know better!) spent the night snowed-in their snowdome last night. Apparently, they were too freaked out by the snow to make the scary trip (all 5 yards) to Henbogle Coop.

Dan reported when he went out to shovel and secure the coop for the night that 2 of the girls were standing in the snow halfway between the snow dome and the coop, clearly attempting to fire a neuron and recall the way to the coop through the darkness and snow. Fortunately, Dan came along just in time to shoo them into the coop, but the other three were not departing the security of the snow dome.

All were were fine this morning. When they heard me coming with treats they came out to greet me. Poppy and Iris had a few beakfuls of treat then made a beeline for the preferred nestbox. Iris got there first, so Poppy stood on the edge of the box crowding Iris until I picked Poppy up and placed her in the next box. 10 minutes later, I had 3 additional fresh eggs, nice and warm.

Silly chickens. They are cute, but clearly have some challenges in the brain department.

Tamale Pie

2008-01-14T21:14:00.001-05:00

Tonight's yummy dinner: Tamale Pie.

I made a bit pot of chili the other day. It is always a bit pot of chili, because how else can you put in all the things that make chili taste great? My typical batch includes onion, garlic, green peppers, red peppers if I have them, chipotle chiles, chili powder, corn, carrots and/or sweet potatoes, black beans, pinto beans, canned tomatoes (DelMonte diced with jalapenos), and a few other secret ingredients. This batch included some ground beef and green peas, and kidney beans instead of pintos.

Anyway, with a big pot of chili, that leaves some great options for morphing it into another dish, in this case, Tamale Pie.

The recipe, (such as it is):

2 c stone ground cornmeal
2 eggs
2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 c oil or melted butter
1 ish cup of yogurt or buttermilk
milk enough to make it the right consistency
1 ish cup shredded cheddar cheese

Leftover chili

Mix dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, mix eggs, oil, and yogurt. Add the dry ingredients, stir together, and add milk as needed.

Grease the sides of a casserole dish. For best result, use a dish with a fairly large surface area (my pictured dish is really too small but that casserole is magic). Spread the leftover chili evenly the casserole dish. Pour 1/2 the batter over the top, sprinkle half the cheese. Pour the remaining batter and spread over the cheese. Bake at 350 until the cornbread is done, test with a toothpick or cake tester. Remove from the oven and spread the remaining cheese over the top. Broil until melted and yummy (2+/- minutes). Serve and enjoy!

The wallop zone

2008-01-14T20:30:00.001-05:00

Well, thus far we've received about 14" of snow. We are definitely in the wallop zone, as Dan so aptly described it. We're in the white band, just a bit NE of Portland.

Dan did not have school today, but I elected to drive in to work as I stayed home on Friday during our freezing rain/sleet/rain/yuk storm. After a short day in the office, I hit the road for home at about 3 pm, and it was a white knuckle drive for at least half the drive, but conditions improved as I got closer to home (and don't they always!)

Dan was out cleaning up when I arrived home, he looked like a Yeti, but at least the worst of it is done. I left him to it and made a nice bubbling hot dinner. The snow was white and fluffy, and covered up all the sand and muck, so I'm trying to make the best of it. If I recall correctly, I read somewhere that as of our last storm, we had received 36 inches of snow. Add today's 14"+ and thus far this winter, we've received over 50 inches. To date. And did I mention February and March are our big snow months?

The good life

2008-01-07T20:04:00.000-05:00

A comfy seat, family, and a nearby woodstove, what more could a cat ask for? (Well, at a minimum, tuna, and catnip, plus a servant to administer it, and maybe some new cat toys, and a heated plush catbed for when the woodstove isn't running, oh, and fresh litter every day.)

From left, Luna, Luigi, and Yoda, who grace the home of our friends Bill and Karen with their presence.

The damn ice...

2008-01-06T20:14:00.000-05:00

has created an ice dam, which has created a damn leak.

We still have not repaired the dining room ceiling where the upstairs bathroom sink sprung a leak all those months ago.

There is not a roof rake to be found within 25 miles. So, we drip. Thus far the leaking is confined to the ceiling above the kitchen sink, and the window above the sink.

Maybe one of us will be able to find a roof rake Monday near our respective workplaces.

Yeah, right. Maybe we need to investigate deicing cables before next winter.

Compare and contrast

2008-01-03T16:41:00.000-05:00

Then

Now

Today was cold, in the low teens with gusty winds. Tomorrow is supposed to be colder. I'm ready for spring, bring it on!

Another 8 inches...and where will we put it?

2008-01-02T10:34:00.000-05:00

The snowbank at this point is nearly over my head.

Our Adirondack chairs are reminding me that it will be a long time before we are using them.

I can hardly believe that is garden in front of the grape vine arbor. This summer it looked like this.

The snow is pretty....
The garden shed.

The hen's snow dome is holding up, but looking a bit strained under all this snow. I hope it makes it through the winter!

Fresh snow for the new year

2008-01-01T18:44:00.000-05:00

True to the forecast, the snow began here at 12:50 pm, and it has been snowing steadily ever since. Dan's guessing that as of 6:30, we had 3 inches of snow, with the flakes becoming heavier and falling more rapidly as the evening goes on.

The forecast has flopped and flipped more than a presidential candidate before the Iowa caucus, but right now the prediction is for up to 9 inches, about half of early predictions for 12-14 inches. Will there be school tomorrow? Only time will tell at this point.

Yesterday, we spent a very pleasant new year's eve with friends Bill and Karen. After shoveling out yesterday morning, we picked Bill and Karen up in the afternoon and drove to the local independent movie house to see the movie Juno.

We all enjoyed it, as did most of the other patrons, judging from the laughs during the movie and smiles after in the lobby. We then grabbed dinner at a locally owned Mexican restaurant, then went back to Bill's and Karen's for a few games of cards and some celebratory champagne. Karen whipped up a dessert treat, "David Eyre's Pancake," an eggy, puffy pancake reminiscent of a Dutch Baby, but sprinkled generously with lemon juice and powdered sugar.

Curious, today I did a quick search on it and found it had been originally published in the NY Times by Craig Claiborne in 1966, and again fairly recently featured in the food section. More can be found about the pancake and David Eyre here and more, including the recipe below, from Eyre himself, here.

The David Eyre Pancake

2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (the New York Times recorded the nutmeg measure as a "pinch")
4 tablespoons butter
2 to 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
Juice of half a lemon, or more to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, lightly beat eggs. Add flour, milk and nutmeg and lightly beat until blended but still slightly lumpy.

Melt butter in a 12-inch skillet** with a heatproof handle over medium-high heat. (An 11-by-7-inch Pyrex dish will work equally well, according to Eyre.) When butter is very hot but not brown, pour in batter. Bake until pancake is billowing on the edges and golden brown, about 15 minutes.

Working quickly, remove pan from oven, and using a fine-meshed sieve, sprinkle with sugar. Return to oven for 1 to 2 minutes more.

Sprinkle with lemon juice. Serves 2 to 4.

** Eyre said a cast iron skillet made the pancake too crisp.

In the article, Eyre mentions the pancake is delicious served with macademia nuts, pineapple and/or mango. I'll have to try that!

Decidedly delicious. Thanks, Karen, and best wishes to all for a happy and healthy new year!

Snow, and more to come

2007-12-31T12:59:00.001-05:00

The total as of 11:51 am from Wunderground was 8.5 inches, and the storm is just now winding down.

The forecast for Tuesday? More snow, although the latest NWS forecast is backing away from earlier heavy snowfall predictions. According to the NWS, it has been the snowiest December in Maine in 10 years.

With our fabulous little electric snowblower, it took us just about 2 hours to do a thorough job of shoveling (deck, driveway, path to oil fill pipe, path to Henbogle Coop) and cleaning off the vehicles. Not bad at all. Time for soup.

Popping out of the oven

2007-12-30T21:49:00.000-05:00

Amazingly, given the generosity of the Henbogle girls, I had never made popovers until tonight. They were scrumptious!

I served them with a lovely pan seared steak, cooked with some of our shallots, and roasted pole beans from our garden. It was a yummy dinner.

Popovers
Makes 6

1 cup sifted bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 xl eggs
1 cup milk
unsalted butter for brushing the custard cups

Preheat oven to 450°F Warm the eggs and milk to room temperature

Stir flour and salt together a medium bowl. Stir together the eggs and the milk, and add to the flour mixture. Stir the batter until it is smooth. In oven, heat six custard cups until hot (5+ minutes). Remove from oven, brush with the butter, and fill them half full with the batter. Bake the popovers in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375°F, and bake the popovers for 20+/- minutes more, or until they are browned and crisp. I had about a tablespoon of leftover asiago cheese all grated, which I stirred in to the flour mixture -- I could taste a hint of it, I'd try that again.

Welcoming the light

2007-12-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

Although I love Christmas, when I give free rein to my inner magpie, at this time of year my energy is always at a low point. The short days, too often cloudy, sap my energy and keep me inside for far too much of the time. It seems like my only moments outside are brief forays to other buildings on campus or to and from the car, and weekends never have enough room in them to spend all the time I want outside.

But last Saturday we celebrated the return of the light here at Henbogle, inviting a few friends over for good company, good food and a Solstice fire. Each guest had a spring of evergreen to throw on the fire if so desired, and after the blaze died down we warmed ourselves with some delicious homemade eggnog, courtesy of the Henbogle girls. We certainly enjoyed ourselves immensely, and I hope our friends did, too.

The promise of lengthening days and a fresh new year are energizing, as is having some time off together here at home. Dan and I have spent quite a bit of time clearing the clutter, weeding the bookshelves, reorganizing our files (aka giant piles of paper) and puttering about. We've both had colds, so the desperately-needed cleaning of the barn hasn't happened, but it will, as a February vacation project looms.

We visit the girls daily for bonus midday treats, (frozen pumpkin, breadcrumbs, leftover green beans, yum!) and took advantage of a warm day to clean out Henbogle Coop and put in fresh bedding (that's Pippi checking things out). A recent winter rainstorm had exposed a few blades of grass which the girls greeted with enthusiasm. The snow dome is working out remarkably well, now that the girls have overcome their fear of the snow.

A big pile of gardening catalogs awaits my attention, and with the promise of snow for the next few days, I am sure to have time to start planning for spring as the light increases. And of course, there are a few birthdays ahead to look forward too as well. Happy new year, everyone!

Henbogle Eggnog

12 eggs, separated
2 cups sugar
2 c gold rum
1 c apricot brandy
3 pints milk
1 pint heavy cream
Nutmeg

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until thick. Slowly stir in the rum, apricot brandy, milk and cream. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled and pour into a punch bowl. Beat the egg whites until stiff and and fold gently into the eggnog. Grate fresh nutmeg on top to taste

It was a strange kind of day today

2007-12-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

On the way in to work, listening to a story on NPR's Morning Edition, I heard Harlan Rodberg, a worker at the Winnebago factory in Forest City, MN, say "You can't take booze, sex and weekends away from the American people, they're not gonna sit back and do nothing...." in reference to a question on the economy affecting Winnebago sales.

I then went to a meeting where we talked about whether or not the English faculty would support a community read (by support, I mean, mention it in classes and to colleagues and neighbors, not vote for it or anything requiring a long term commitment.)

I had lunch with my boss and gave him an ass in the form of a Christmas ornament (the Democratic party symbol.) He loved it, or so he said.

Later in the afternoon, in a classroom on campus, written on the blackboard, was the following, "When you see a finger, it means something."

And I spent a good portion of the afternoon discussing strategies to affect policy changes impacting energy usage in residential zoning and building codes.

It was a strange day. What was your day like?

Winter arrived early this year

2007-12-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

Here at Henbogle, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We had our first big snowstorm last week on Monday, December 3. In a classic nor'easter, we received about 10" of snow, followed by a cold snap and wind. Since then, we've received a couple more inches, 2 of them this morning.

The chickens were NOT happy with the change in weather. Monday they refused to exit Henbogle coop. There was much discussion about the weather, lots of squawking and wing flapping, but NO ONE was going outside. (I'm almost positive I heard Iris say "Oh no, I'm not going, you can't make me go outside.")

Tuesday, ditto. Again on Wednesday they refused to exit. Dan had shoveled an area around the coop, and a nice path from the coop to the snow dome, just a few feet away, but no dice, they were having none of it. Finally, on Thursday, I reached in and grabbed Sophie, then Iris, then Poppy, then Pippi, and deposited them one at a time in the snowdome. With a nice roost, snow free ground (and a dust bath!), straw, some oyster shell, and plenty of scratch, the dome is a big treat for them -- but they had to traverse the scary snow-covered path to get there. It might as well have been the Continental Divide.

Once I put a few of them outside, and gave them some treats, the rest of the girls followed, and now they head out to the 'dome every day as soon as we open the coop in the morning. Silly chickens.

Why are there no photos of the snow-covered snow dome and the girls? I've misplaced the cord to my camera, and cannot download them until I find it. Grrr.

Too late now, but for next year....

2007-12-10T15:30:00.001-05:00

Check out these herb wreaths from McFadden Farm in California, made from organically grown culinary herbs!

Not local, but very cool and useful. Unfortunately, the Maine climate and bay laurel are not compatible.

Counting down the days...

2007-12-09T21:08:00.000-05:00

until Spring. I added a countdown timer, over there, just above the "About Me" section.

Ack! Fedco orders are due tomorrow!

2007-12-06T12:22:00.000-05:00

Where does the time go! The deadline for discount orders from Fedco is due tomorrow. Orders placed by this date receive a 10% discount of orders of $200 or more, 15% for $400+.

Last year, my pal Karen and I placed a joint order and managed to meet the $200 needed for the discount. I don't know what Karen is planning, I need to call her tonight and see if she wants to place a joint order.

Sod killing cardboard

2007-12-03T13:46:00.001-05:00

As I have posted about before, I am a big fan of using cardboard to kill the sod and suppress weeds when developing new garden beds or planting shrubs. We've successfully used that strategy with the blueberry hedge, the holly hedge and the grape arbor bed.

As we are over run with weeds like creeping bellflower, plantain, creeping charlie and more here at Henbogle, we are continuing that strategy as we work our way along the boundaries of the property, removing invasives and planting shrub borders.

Next spring, we'll be working on the east border beyond the freestanding deck, by the neighbors swing set. We have a ancient, gorgeous flowering crab along the west boundary, and now are concentrating on understory shrubs and plants, probably hostas and ferns as it is pretty shady there. Our bottle tree is featured there as well, capturing any evil spirits that venture our way.

The first step in creating the shrub border: kill off the existing plants, a mix of orange daylillies, mildew-ridden phlox, creeping purple bellflower and other assorted weedy growth. In the past few years I've planted a few black- and red chokeberries in there, and on the far side of the crab a serviceberry or two. My next step is to smother everything else and give the shrubs a year or two without competing weeds, and then we'll be able to fill in with the shade-loving perennials.

Over the last few weekends, we cut back all the plants, spread our chopped leaves, then laying down thick layers of brown cardboard over the leaves. Over the winter the cardboard will begin to break down, and in the spring we'll cover it with mulch of some sort, and try and be patient. And of course, we have to weight the cardboard down so it doesn't blow away.

A moveable coop

2007-12-02T16:46:00.000-05:00

In addition to all the chores listed below, today we moved Henbogle coop closer to the house. When we built the chicken coop, we imagined our backyard biddies would be relocated every winter, much closer to the house, to make it easier to care for them, heat the water, etc. We added small wheels and had fantasies of blithely trundling the coop hither and yon throughout the seasons, giving the girls fresh grass and a change of scenery.

Well, were we in for a change of tune. Our cadillac of coops weighs a ton. In future, we will be be sure to remember that coop housing doesn't require the same standards as home construction. Those puny little wheels did allow us to get it to the designated location, but it was a challenge. Still, we thought in the fall we'd move it closer, but didn't take into account a soggy fall, with the ground too wet to haul a chicken coop across it. So it stayed at the end of the vegetable garden, until today.

From our old dead lawnmower, Dan salvaged some larger wheels, and this morning attached them, and a 2x4 for a handle, and we moved the coop about 20 feelt closer to the house. Not that much closer, but every little bit counts (in the photos, the coop used to be just behind the back fence post of the vegetable garden). Once we had it in position, we put it up on blocks, and removed the 2x4 handle. She's good to go for the winter.

In addition to the coop we also put away all the deck furniture, brought out our old wooden sleds and skis as Christmas decor, put the riding lawn mower away for the winter, and weighted down our cardboard with branches. More on that later.

Winter preparations, just in time

2007-12-02T08:36:00.000-05:00

Saturday we had a cold and very windy day, brr. In light of predictions for a big nor'easter on Monday, we bustled about putting clear plastic over the draftiest windows, and I roasted yet another turkey because I am craving some turkey sandwiches and a pot of turkey soup . Turkey with cranberry sauce, and hot open-faced turkey sandwiches with gravy now await.

This morning the weather service has forecasted even more snow all day on Monday, with accumulations of 2-4 inches Sunday night, and 8-12 more inches on Monday. Today, we need to finish as many more outdoor chores as we can. I started by filling all the birdfeeders this morning, but there's a lot more--
repair the broken barn window
put the lawn mower and riding mowers away
finish putting cardboard down under the flowering crab tree
pick up the cardboard that blew around the yard yesterday
get some more straw for the chickens
and do a final patrol to put overlooked items away, etc

Yikes! time to get moving!

Locavore logic

2007-11-27T20:36:00.000-05:00

Eating locally can be a challenge and it can also be more expensive. It isn't for everyone, and it is important to me to respect other's circumstances and choices. But Dan and I are choosing to buy locally when we can, because we like our neighbors and I'd rather support them than some California mega-farm. (That said, however, I'm not giving up exotic spices, olive oil, or citrus fruit, etc.)

Kim at Yankee Food over in NH recently had a great post about eating locally. She really articulates many of my feelings about eating locally. What it all comes down to, however, is this: I'd rather give my food dollars to my neighbors, and in so doing, support them and their farms, and thus preserving the Maine I know and love.

Backyard gardeners rock

2007-11-27T20:01:00.000-05:00

There was an interesting article in the NY Times today about the role of European backyard gardeners in protecting genetic diversity. Long live the backyard gardener! We're saving humanity from supermarket tomatoes, one garden at a time.

What was lost is now found: Double Chocolate Pound Cake

2007-11-26T20:47:00.002-05:00

I was beginning to panic --my chocolate pound cake recipe had gone astray. It was based on one of my mother's recipes, but I'd made several changes to it, tweaking it here and there to better accommodate my taste and including new techniques I've learned along the way. It would take me many tries to recreate my changes, even if I could find the cake recipe again.

And then Holly called and said she'd found a pad of paper. She laughed, saying she knew it was mine because it contained many lists. She didn't realize the cake recipe was in the middle of the lists. I was so very glad to lay my hands on this recipe again!

Double Chocolate Pound Cake
1 ¾ c flour
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 ½ sticks butter, divided
1 ¾ c light brown sugar
1 T vanilla
5 eggs
¾ c cocoa
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
¾ boiling water
1 c sour cream

Pre-heat oven to 350º F Grease bundt pan with a mix of 1 T each of melted butter and baking cocoa, blended into a paste. Heat ¾ c water to a boil. Add cocoa and stir together. Add ½ stick of butter and chocolate and stir until melted. Allow to cool slightly, then stir in sour cream. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour baking soda and salt. Beat 1 stick butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about four minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour and chocolate mixture alternately. Bake until just pulling away from the pan, about 60 minutes.

This is a very adaptable cake. For Holly's wedding, I used organic dark chocolate with orange, added the zest of a large, organic orange, and made an orange sauce from the juice of the orange to use as a glaze. It was a terrific combination of chocolate and orange. I had hoped to make candied orange peel for a garnish, but ran out of time. This summer for Dan's and Michelle's silver birthday celebration, I flavored the cake with cherry liquer and made a cherry glaze for the top. I am so glad Holly found the recipe!

A tale of two turkeys

2007-11-25T18:15:00.000-05:00

We had a marvelous visit to Dan's parent's in NY over the Thanksgiving holiday, with time to cook, to chat, for me to get a crochet refresher from Mom, and do a few chores for Mom and Dad, too.

We drove over on Tuesday, departing just as the snow started here in Maine -- fortunately just a dusting but enough to make me wish I'd purchased new windshield wipers before the trip. Traffic was not terrible, but busy enough on the Mass Pike to make me really glad we were driving over early.

Instead of driving west with a zillion other crazy Mass drivers, on Wednesday we did a few chores and in the afternoon, I made pie --pumpkin, pumpkin pecan, and apple. It went pretty quickly as I had made the dough ahead of time -- which also made the dough a little easier to work with, I think. Whatever the reason, these pies turned out pretty well, the bottom crust was crisp and they were beautifully flaky and tender.

We did have a pie tragedy. A piping hot pumpkin pie was knocked off the counter, did a mid-air flip and landed right-side up on the floor, but with much of the filling jolted out of the crust onto the floor. Fortunately, the pie plate did not break, but chaos ensued as we scurried to get the hot pie filling off the floor before the dog ate the filling, or the hot plate burned the linoleum. It was heartbreaking, (all those Henbogle eggs gone to waste!) but no one was hurt, we got to a sample the filling and crust without guilt, (see the before sampling photo, below left) and we have a new anecdote for the family stories archive. Perfect!

There was plenty of pumpkin puree left, and I had enough dough left for another crust, so I whipped together another pumpkin pie. I am just glad it wasn't the pumpkin pecan pie that crashed, as that would have been one sticky mess!

Making the pies the day ahead made cooking the actual dinner go pretty smoothly, even with the disadvantage of being in a different kitchen and using an unfamiliar smooth-top electric stove. It is crucial to plan backwards from the time dinner will be served, and make as much ahead as possible. I like roasted vegetables, so I usually try and make as much in the oven as possible, which also leaves the burners free for gravy and mashed potatoes, etc. Things were a bit tight in Mom's oven (note the oven rack mark across the turkey breast on the above photo), but I managed by cooking the squash ahead of time and reheating while the turkey rested. Of course, kitchen staff makes life easier, too.

Dan was a big help, doing dishes, washing the turkey and prepping the squash. He even julienned the carrots for me. I was trying to make life easy for Dan's mom, but needed her help with a few things, readying the potatoes and especially with finding the various dishes needed to cook everything.

I only swore twice, once when I turned off the wrong burner, causing the gravy to boil over, burning on the stove, and again during the emergency response that followed, when the roux for the gravy hit the floor, arghh. I'm getting better at producing these dinners, but by this point, with dinner mere moments away, I was on the edge.

Lucky for me, Dan's sister Jean was on hand to help out, she made a flour-water paste to thicken the gravy, and with that, dinner was served. Of course, this means that I was so wigged out I forgot to take the group photo I had planned, but we all enjoyed dinner and good company, and that is, after all, what it is all about.

Capping off the holiday was a flying visit to my friend Mrs. Holly to see her and get a taste of a second Thanksgiving feast. We had my favorite, little turkey sandwiches made on Holly's fabulous homemade dinner rolls. Holly is still enjoying her newlywed status, and we got to ooh and ah over photos and wedding gifts. The visit was far too short, but I hope we'll see her again soon for a visit here at Henbogle. Maybe for a solstice celebration? I can hope....

Turkey Time

2007-11-19T19:54:00.000-05:00

In addition to getting all the fall chores done, we are getting ready for a visit to NY with Dan's family over Thanksgiving. It will be a real harvest meal, featuring our carrots, potatoes, pumpkins, herbs and some locally grown squash and onions from Carlson's Farm just across the river.

I'm going to be doing much of the cooking, and have been busily preparing here at home, making turkey stock and roasting pumpkins for the pies. I used two medium sized "Winter Luxury" pumpkins, (seeds from FEDCO) roasting them in a 425 degree oven until very tender. I'm curious about whether they live up to the catalog hype.

I'm planning on an apple pie, a pumpkin pie, and for Dan, a reprise of the Pumpkin Pecan Pie from last year. In addition to dessert, roast turkey, sausage apple stuffing, roasted squash, baked stuffed Brussells sprouts, and more. I'm looking forward to dinner already!

Hen Dome v.2

2007-11-19T19:27:00.000-05:00

Whew, it has been busy here at Henbogle, and I've been a blog slacker. I need to get back in the groove of an almost daily post. I don't know where the time goes, but I sure don't feel like there's enough to go around.

This weekend was cold but clear after a particularly rainy week --perfect weather to try and finish up some outdoor chores and the pressing fall chores, like storm windows and preparing the hen dome for the winter.

The hen dome is basically our simple, portable hoop house set up in the chicken yard for the hens to use during the winter. It gives them a covered place to hang out that is free of snow and out of the rain. We set one up last year and it worked great until the big April snow storm
collapsed it and tore the plastic.

We made some modifications this year, making the sides more vertical and banking the sides with straw bales to (we hope) prevent the plastic from blowing out in the wind, and maybe even providing a little insulation for the chooks.

Naturally, we had a team of hengineers consulting on every aspect of construction.

Create a cookbook

2007-11-14T21:35:00.000-05:00

I'm so excited I just have to write about this (and no, I'm not getting a kickback from the company). There's a new website, Tastebook,which provides a template for self-publishing a cookbook!

I long ago promised a friend a cookbook as a wedding gift, and did give her a crude pile of pages from the laser printer, but have yet to get the book formatted to go to Kinkos for printing.

Now, I don't have to. It is so easy to upload recipes, that I'm halfway finished (54 recipes) uploading all my recipes from my book. In addition to uploading your own, you can import favorites from Epicurious as well.

Finally, no more frantic shuffling through the clutter to find a recipe drafted on the back of an envelope. They will all be neatly bound in an organized manner. Now if I could just find the recipe for the chocolate pound cake....

More wedding photos

2007-11-04T20:02:00.001-05:00

Gold lame socks for the bride -- to match the gold lame sneakers!

Sarah, Holly and Mom

Holly and Pop

Holly and I

Mom & Pop escort Holly

Congratulations Holly & Dave!

2007-11-03T21:54:00.000-04:00

A lovely bride with Mom & Pop, Esther & Bill

A done deal!

Dancing with Pop

A little bridal exultation

Cutting the delicious chocolate orange wedding cake, (Dave's flavorite) made with love by me and the hens. I made sure to keep a chunk for freezing to share on their first anniversary.

There was a lot of hairspray involved in that hairdo.

The stage crew rejoices, our friends are wedded.

My best friend is getting hitched tomorrow!

2007-11-02T22:38:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Holly and Dave on their upcoming nuptials. They have been together many years and are finally going to celebrate their togetherness with family and friends.

I've known Holly since 1983, when we met in Professor Ronald Koperski's public speaking class at Bradley University. Until that moment, I had been questioning my sanity in departing Maine for Peoria, Illinois, but once I met Holly, I realized why fate had sent me to Bradley.

We've been through good times and better times together, and I'm looking forward to many more years of laughter.

Best wishes to both of my friends on this happy day.

A wee little egg

2007-10-28T19:48:00.000-04:00

There's another hen in the coop! (I think it is Pippi but can't say for sure.)

Dan came home from work Friday and found this cute little egg, seen here next to an egg from Sophie and an egg from one of the experienced hens. This egg is much tinier than even Sophie's first egg, which was smaller than Hyacinth's first egg. I think now that Ayla is the only one who has yet to lay an egg, she's a late bloomer that one! Maybe she's waiting for a cute rooster name Jondalar....

The girls are getting along better these days. All 8 are roosting together, there seems to be less harassment from Iris and Hyacinth over treats, and the new girls are becoming more savvy. This morning from the breakfast window I saw a hawk after a delicious meal of tender free-range chicken. I ran out and startled the hawk, which at first settled on a nearby tree, then flew begrudgingly off as I approached. Six of the hens were hiding in the shrubbery, and Iris and Poppy were in the coop. They are learning how and where to hide. I'm glad I chased the hawk off, though, he can find some other food-source than my girls, and maybe he'll give up if he continues to be unsuccessful.

Not much other news here at Henbogle. It was a super busy week at work with a lecture by Madeleine Albright on Thursday, and another big panel discussion looming on Monday on a hot development topic here in Maine. I've also been getting ready for a trip to Massachusetts for my best friend Holly's wedding next Saturday. I am working on a longer post about the new garden bed and a review of the flower gardens, when I get to it.

No wonder they died young....

2007-10-21T20:47:00.000-04:00

The home-preserved tally thus far:
* 16 pints of Dilly Beans, + ? lbs. processed wax & green beans in the freezer
* 28 quarts of grape juice
*13 1/2 pints grape jelly
* 5 pints pickled pepper rings
* 7 pints of roasted tomato sauce
*8 quarts of roasted tomato sauce

Frankly, I'm pooped. It's no wonder earlier generations of Americans died early. If they did not succumb from childbirth or improperly processed tomatoes, no doubt they died of exhaustion.

Still on my list: 2 batches of pepper jelly with my gorgeous lemon drop peppers. I have a sinking feeling I'll see that hope flash by given the speed of events these days. Over the weekend, I processed another 5 quarts of roasted tomato sauce. I roasted the tomatoes Friday evening, then refrigerated them until this morning, when Dan helped me run them through the tomato mill to remove seeds and skins, then put it on the stove to simmer for the day while we attended to other items on the list.
The above tally does not include the large tubs of potatoes, carrots, and (yikes!) a few more tomatoes in the barn, nor the remaining leeks in the garden.

I picked the last of the Swiss Chard early last week, after realizing the hens love Swiss Chard, and any left in the garden would be reprocessed into eggs. The few remaining heads of broccoli are already eggs, sigh. I need to remember that next year. Still, the girls are doing a wonderful job cleaning up the garden, and they are so happy while they do it, what a treat to watch them at work.

As the sauce gently bubbled away, we loaded the truck with the mildew-riddled squash and pumpkin vines, and trundled off to the town transfer/composting station. As we pulled in to the yard waste area, we gleefully spied a fresh load of pine needles --just the thing for mulching the blueberry hedge, which Dan had weeded last week. I hope the pine needles are less conducive to the insidious creeping Charlie, (aka ground ivy, gill-over-the-ground and one hundred other names), since it thrives in compost and doesn't blink at shredded bark mulch.

Once we dumped the squash plants, we loaded the truck up with armloads of gorgeous pine needles and headed home. Within a matter of minutes the blueberries were mulched for the winter. I hope that in addition to the preventing charlie encroachment, the pine needles will add to the acidity of the soil as they break down, making our blueberries happy and productive. I still need to add 2 plants to the row, I've got to remember to look up the variety I need. All told, it was a pleasant and productive day in the garden.

The glorious maple

2007-10-21T17:38:00.000-04:00

It was a perfect fall day today, clear blue skies, a slight breeze, warm enough for shirtsleeves.

The unseasonably warm fall has delayed the peak of foliage season statewide, and in my opinion, mid-coast Maine peaked this weekend.

Our lovely maple is breathtaking, even though a gusty rainstorm Friday stripped lots of leaves.

Wild chickens

2007-10-18T20:14:00.000-04:00

After crowing about our success in finally integrating the new chicks with the old, we have a few strange behaviors cropping up.

Roaming in the vegetable garden, the old hens have begun laying their eggs amidst the remaining plants, mostly herbs at this point since we had a killing frost on Tuesday night. Whichever new chick(s) is laying (2 eggs now) is using the nest boxes.

And to top off this weird behavior, now the old chickens have taken to sleeping in the rough in the vegetable garden. Last night three of them were in there, with Iris (Iris!) happily roosting with the new chicks.

How weird is that?!

Sunday's Harvest

2007-10-17T21:39:00.000-04:00

As usual, I don't have time enough to accomplish all the things on my list, including a comprehensive post on the veggie garden. For now, here's what we harvested on Sunday:

Potatoes (Carola, Austrian Crescent, Rose Apple Finn, Red Norland), Carrots (Atomic Red, Mokum, and Rainbow Mix), some Beets, with more awaiting us (Detroit Dark Red and Burpee's Golden), Pole Beans for seed saving (Gold of Bacau and Michael's strain), and more Tomatoes for a final batch of sauce. I also cut large bunches of thyme, parsley, and catnip for drying. I have oregano and rosemary to cut and then once the ground is frozen, I'll heavily mulch the rosemary in hopes it will overwinter.

One of the Carola potatoes is the largest potato I've ever seen, it was huge, with many other 1-plus pound taters. We had some that night and they were yummy! The garden sink again proved its worth, providing a great spot to pre-wash all the taters and carrots.

Frost hardy plants still producing: Swiss Chard Bright Lights), Leeks (King Richard), and the aforementioned Beets.

With most everything harvested, we decided it was time to turn the chickens loose in the garden to help put it to bed. We were able to rig the gate into the chicken run in such a way that it could serve as the garden and chicken run gate and allow the hens free access to the garden.

The big girls were thrilled to get in, they made a beeline for the potato patch and went to town digging and worm hunting. In no time, they'll have done most of our weeding, cleaned up a lot of bugs, left some fertilizer, and scratched up the mulch, encouraging it to break down into the soil. They are like deluxe rototillers, but way better.

One of these eggs is not like the others...

2007-10-16T19:40:00.000-04:00

It's smaller!

One of the new chicks laid an egg! Was it Dorothy, Pippi, Sophie, or Ayla? Based on her behavior of late, I think it was Sophie.

Over the past 2 weeks, we successfully integrated old and new chicks. We began by removing the fence that divided the chicken run in half. Iris and Hyacinth occasionally harassed the new chicks, but the little chicks had plenty of escape routes and spots to hide, so only a few squawks ensued.

At night the little chicks were secured in their baby pen. After two weeks of this, it was time to complete the integration process, so one night after dark, when all the chickens were sleepy and roosting, we removed the little chicks from their pen, and placed them in Henbogle coop. A few squawks were heard, but not many, and the next morning, there appeared to be little in the way of physical damage to the little chicks.

After 2 nights of the midnight transfers, we closed off the little coop, and at dusk, we went out to make sure they were in Henbogle Coop, and they were. The first few nights the little chicks huddled together in the nest boxes, but now seem to be making themselves comfortable on the roost. We managed the transition just in time, I'm sure more eggs will soon be following.

Our first Frost Advisory of the season

2007-10-16T15:42:00.001-04:00

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GRAY ME
304 PM EDT TUE OCT 16 2007

...A FROSTY NIGHT IS ON TAP FOR SOUTHEAST NEW HAMPSHIRE AND
SOUTHERN MAINE...

.HIGH PRESSURE BUILDING OVER THE REGION FROM QUEBEC WILL RESULT IN
CLEAR SKIES AND LIGHT WINDS TONIGHT. THE COMBINATION WILL LEAD TO
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FROST OVER MUCH OF THE AREA LATE TONIGHT AND
EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING.

...FROST ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 8 AM EDT WEDNESDAY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN GRAY HAS ISSUED A FROST
ADVISORY...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 8 AM EDT WEDNESDAY.

LOWS IN THE LOWER TO MID 30S WILL RESULT IN AREAS OF FROST ACROSS
THE REGION LATE TONIGHT AND EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING.

A FROST ADVISORY MEANS THAT FROST IS POSSIBLE. SENSITIVE OUTDOOR
PLANTS MAY BE KILLED IF LEFT UNCOVERED.

Garden porn

2007-10-14T22:01:00.000-04:00

Check out the zinnias, still blooming like crazy!

We worked like dogs in the garden today, and I've got lots to write about, but I'm too pooped.
For now, I'll just share some home grown loving.

Scroll down.

Don't look if you're distressed by tubers!

A Red Norlands and a Rose Apple Finn potato. Apparently, inconsistent moisture causes knobbiness in potatoes. Whatever, we laughed and laughed and laughed.

Pimped out pumpkins

2007-10-09T19:58:00.000-04:00

Who needs a Harley? Here in Maine, you can grow your own boat, aka giant pumpkin, and paddle it. Yes, the man in the photo is in a giant hollowed-out pumpkin, in this case, a motor pumpkin.

Next year I simply MUST plan on attending the Damariscotta, Maine Pumpkin Festival on Columbus Day to view the vegetable spectacle. Photo from the WCSH-TV website

And for posterity, the recipe

2007-10-08T13:26:00.001-04:00

Pickled Pepper Rings

Prepare 5 pint jars and lids.

3 lbs. mixed sweet and hot peppers
5 c white vinegar
1 ¼ c water
5 t canning salt
5 T mustard seed

Wash and slice peppers in ¼ inch thick rings. (I deveined my peppers and removed most of the seeds).
In a large non-reactive pot, bring brine to a boil.
Place 1 T mustard seed in bottom of each jar. Pack pepper rings into jars.
Cover with hot brine, allowing ½ inch headspace.
Process for 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

Allow to age gracefully for 3 months.

Pickled pepper Rings

2007-10-08T12:20:00.000-04:00

There's nothing better than some hot pepper rings to lift an ordinary sandwich into a new realm of taste excitement, so with all those gorgeous garden peppers, this morning I made Pickled Pepper Rings.

I had several varieties of peppers to choose from. Carmen Sweet Peppers from Johnny's Selected Seeds, of which the catalog says "A beautiful new pepper of the Italian "bulls horn" (corno di toro) type from Johnny's owners and plant breeders Janika Eckert and Rob Johnston. Carmen has a lovely sweet taste for salads and roasting, especially when partially or fully red-ripe. Tapered fruits avg. 6" long x 2 1/2" wide, 5 oz. (142 gm), and ripen from green to deep carmine red. Maturity is early on an upright, medium-size plant. Days to Maturity or Bloom: 60 days green, 80 days red ripe."

Italia, also from Johnny's, of which the Johnny's catalog says "Long, avg. 2 1/2" x 8", fruits are green, and ripen early to a dark crimson red. Corno di toro type, with wide shoulders, reminiscent of a colorful bull's horn. Sweet, full pepper flavor that expresses itself well in pasta sauces and stir-fries. Days to Maturity or Bloom: 55 days green, 75 days red ripe."

Why two of the same type of pepper you ask? Because I purchased the plants from Johnny's and they did not have full six packs of either, so I was given the Italia's even though I really didn't need more... and of course once they were home, well, I couldn't not plant them...right?

Lipstick, according to the Johnny's catalog "Heavy, attractive, dark green fruits are about 4" long and taper to a blunt point. They ripen to a glossy, rich red. Thick, juicy, and sweet for salads and cooking, and perfect for roasting and salsa. Dependable, early, heavy yields, even in a cool summer season. Days to Maturity or Bloom: 53 days green, 73 days red ripe."

Sweet Banana also purchased as seedlings but from where I don't know. Days to Maturity: 75.

and Lemon Drop, from seeds I saved and gave to my gardening pal Michael. I was unable to get any seeds to germinate, but he was successful and gave me 3 plants. These plants were incredibly prolific, early, as the peppers themselves ripened earlier than the above peppers, beautiful, and hot, hot, hot!

I'll report back in late December when these jars are ready to crack open. Until then, I'll need to admire frequently!

End of the garden

2007-10-07T10:20:00.001-04:00

We started putting the garden to bed yesterday, harvesting the remaining veggies and then pulling the plants. On the left are the Lemon Drop peppers. The orange are the riper peppers, the remaining are a light greenish yellow. On the right are the sweet peppers, a mix of Johnny's Carmen, Italia, and Sweet Banana.

It is so sad, but now we have the fun of thinking and planning for next year, and of course, savoring the foods we've put up for the long winter months.

We picked most of the remaining peppers, but I left a couple of plants with small peppers growing just in case the warm weather continues and delays a killing frost.

We pulled the zucchini and pumpkin vines. Our fabulous zucchini, riddled with powdery mildew, was still producing squash, and amidst the dying vines, I found 2 more pumpkins.

We also harvested all of the basil plants, somewhat ravaged by the evil Japanese beetles, but finally with enough leaves to make pesto.

Sunday we will tackle the tomato plants, and make some additional roasted tomato sauce. I also hope to make a batch of pickled peppers and some hot pepper jelly.

Buttered Rum Pound Cake

2007-09-30T20:54:00.001-04:00

This recipe was originally from Southern Living, but I've made several alterations.

Buttered Rum Pound Cake
1 c butter, softened
2 ½ c brown sugar
6 eggs, separated
3 c flour
¼ t baking soda
1 c sour cream
1 t vanilla
½ c sugar

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in yolks, 1 at a time, beating until just mixed. Stir in vanilla. Combine flour with baking soda and add alternately with the sour cream.

In a clean bowl beat egg whites until foamy, then gradually add ½ c sugar, beating until stiff peaks form. Stir half the whites into batter to lighten, then gently fold in remaining whites.

Pour into greased and floured 10” tube pan. Bake at 325 F for 1 ½ hours. Cool on rack for 10 minutes, and while the cake is cooling make the glaze. After 10 minutes turn cake over onto plate and remove pan. Prick with toothpick or wooden skewer and pour glaze over cake.

Buttered Rum Glaze
6 T butter
3 T rum*
¾ c sugar
3 T water
½ c chopped toasted pecans

Combine butter, rum, sugar and water in a pan. Bring to a boil; boil for 3 minutes stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in pecans.

* Light is best although dark works, too.

Bananas Foster Sauce
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
3 T water
1/3 c rum
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 bananas, peeled and sliced

In a large, deep skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in sugar, water, and cinnamon. When mixture begins to bubble, add bananas. Cook until bananas are hot, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the rum, heat for 1 minute, then ignite rum with a long match. When flames go out, serve immediately.

Heating Season begins

2007-09-30T19:50:00.001-04:00

I usually try and hold out until October 1, but last night we left a couple of windows open, and this morning the temperature in the kitchen was a balmy 54°F.

Being busy with canning tomato sauce in the morning, I didn't really feel the cold, so held off on turning on the furnace. The house did warm up a bit during the day, but at 4 pm is was only 64F so I asked Dan to crank up the woodstove.

I hate to start the heating season, but that good wood heat sure feels good after a busy day.

Another reminder of fall: our friend Karen's birthday was Friday. We celebrated a day late with buttered rum pound cake with bananas foster sauce and a new (old) book: My Life in the Maine Woods by Annette Jackson.

The book has been re-printed with some new material by Islandport Press, and I was sure Karen, our woodswoman friend who grew up camping for weeks at a time in the Allagash, would enjoy it. Apparently I was right since she could barely peel her eyes away from the book to eat her cake. Happy Birthday Karen!

Slinky squirrel trick

2007-09-30T14:48:00.001-04:00

This afternoon, we finally got around to trying a tip I read about in a Fine Gardening magazine. We used a Slinky as a squirrel deterrent, fastening the Slinky over the posts of our bird feeders. I can hardly wait to see the squirrels enjoying their new toy.

Clever Dan fastened the Slinky to the pole using a small hose clamp. Once the Slinky was installed, we filled all the feeders. We have an assortment of feeders for all the preferred feeding styles of our backyard birds, but the favorite among the chickadees and finches are the inexpensive tube feeders seen here on the right.

I think it is the t-shaped perch, which allows the birds to directly face the feeder ports. We have similar but higher-end feeders, but without the t-shaped perches, and invariably, these feeders are used only when all the other perches are full or the t-perched feeders are empty.

I'm not a big fan of winter but at least I can enjoy the birds at the feeders all winter.

Roasted tomato sauce

2007-09-30T13:56:00.000-04:00

This weekend, from the tomato deluge, we pressure canned 5 and 1/2 quarts of roasted tomato sauce to be stored away until we need a taste of sunshine in the depths of dreary winter. Not as much as I had dreamed of, but such is the life of a gardener.

I cut the tomatoes in half and drizzled them with a bit of olive oil. I added a couple of peppers, some onion, and 6 cloves of garlic, and roasted the pans in a 400 degree oven until they were soft. Since most of my tomatoes were not paste tomatoes, they were pretty juicy, so I then transferred to a stockpot to thicken a bit, then we put the whole kit n' caboodle through my tomato press.

The resulting sauce was still pretty thin, so I cooked it down a bit more overnight in my crock pot. This morning I canned the results in my pressure canner. We had a smidgen of leftover which we sampled today at lunch. In a word, yum.

We still have lots of green tomatoes on the vine, and with the balmy fall we've been having, we might get enough tomatoes for another batch of sauce. I wish I'd weighed the tomatoes before I started so I knew how many pounds I used for this one batch.

The plan for next year? A tomato-growing contest between Dan and I --maybe that will inspire us to try harder, thus leading to increased yields.

And finally, the deluge of tomatoes

2007-09-26T18:32:00.001-04:00

We had freakishly hot weather here today, setting record high temps for the state. That has to be good for my tomatoes, which are finally pumping out fruit.

A mixed bowl of Black Krim, Amish Paste, unknown red from Kyle, and Orange Banana.

Lillian's Yellow, a Brandywine-sized potato-leaf heirloom. Kyle grew this seedling.

Orange Banana and an Amish Paste

Sungold and Gardener's Delight cherry tomatoes.

We're still getting a few cukes from the Marketmore 78 plant. The Diva cukes gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, but they are so good we'll try them again next year.

Sweet Banana and Johnny's Carmen Peppers. There are more of these to harvest, and loads of lemon peppers, too. Pepper jelly this weekend, I think.

And despite the powdery mildew, we're still getting delicious squash from the Costata Romanesca zucchini, and the Early Yellow Crookneck are prolific and delicious (as always), too.

Backyard hens are hip

2007-09-25T07:36:00.000-04:00

According to the NY Times, backyard chickens are now all the rage.

I'm not surprised, I can't imagine life without the girls, even though it can lead to hawk-related heartbreak.

But I'm not ready to let them in the house, no matter how much they want to be invited in!

Even graper

2007-09-23T21:07:00.000-04:00

The final tally is 28 quarts of juice and 14 half pints of jelly from 30 +/- pounds of grapes. I've read you can make fruit leather from the leftover grape pulp after straining the juice for jelly, but frankly I'm just too pooped to experiment with that idea this year.

Today we used the turkey fryer to process the jelly, and man, that thing heats up! It sounds like the space shuttle booster rockets, and cuts the time needed to heat up the boiling water bath to boiling by 2/3. I was a bit worried we were going to burn through the bottom of my aging canner but it survived.

We made one batch of low sugar jam using Ball No Sugar Needed pectin. I'd never tried it and was quite curious about what the final product would be like. It called for 4 cups of juice and I chose to use 3 cups of sugar, with a yield of 4 half pints. It set very firmly, and judging from licking up a few dribbles, tasted very flavorful and grape-y. I usually prefer a softer set so I'll be curious to try this batch later this fall. I wonder if more juice would result in a softer set and higher yield?

Our second batch made with Sure Jell pectin called for 5 cups of juice and 7 cups of sugar, and yielded 10 half pints. I did have a skibble over 5 cups of juice but decided to risk a softer set and use it all, since as I mentioned, I prefer a softer set jelly. I scraped out the pot thoroughly and Dan had it loaded in the dishwasher before I could sample a bit, I hope it's good!

I was a bit disappointed with our overall jelly yield. According to my Ball Blue Book, we should have had 12 cups of juice from 14 pounds of grapes, but we got only 9 cups of juice. I'm wondering if we used a food mill to process the juice if that would increase the yield. I'll have to try a different method next year and see what we get. I'm not sure I'd opt for jelly again, anyway, as the grape juice was divine.

One jar of grape juice failed to seal, so Dan and I sampled the juice for breakfast, and as far as I'm concerned, it tasted like nectar of the gods. That will be a special treat all winter, and you can bet that we'll be looking into pruning that grapevine to increase production next year.

Just grape

2007-09-23T09:29:00.000-04:00

We finished canning 28 quarts of grape juice last night at about 11:30. This morning, I slept in until nearly 8 o'clock --unheard of in my life.

The task for today: make 4 batches of grape jelly. The grape juice is in the fridge, it needs to set overnight before straining. Just as well since I was busy making juice!

We crushed the grapes with my potato masher, then briefly simmered them with a small amount of water. Dan then fed the crushed grapes through our Italian tomato press, and we collected the resulting juice in large jars to store in the fridge.

Today is gorgeous, clear as a bell and sunny with a slight breeze. We gathered as many half-pint jars as I could find last night and washed them. We'll be able to process the jam outside on the deck using the turkey fryer propane burner, which heats a huge amount of water a LOT faster than even the high output burner on my gas range. So at least I'll get to spend a few hours outside today before I head in to work for the afternoon, for a special program. Sob.

I really need to do some gardening! I have three new perennials, and a lot of allium bulbs to plant. With a gift certificate, I purchased the Music of the Spheres (photo on the left from WWF) plant collection from White Flower Farm. I also purchased some drumstick allium bulbs to create this collection (photo below from WWF) with some achillea I already have in my new flower bed. When I'm actually going to plant these, I'm just not sure..... Time is flying, and today is the first day of autumn. I miss summer already!

Blogger is having a little trouble with photos just now, so pictures will follow soon. Time to get to work!

Harvest day

2007-09-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

Although I wanted to be at quite possibly one of the best agricultural fairs in the country, the Common Ground Fair, I decided I'd better take it easy and stay home today.

Finally, after many weeks of limping and 2 painful cortisone injections, my plantar fasciitis (sore foot or tendonitis) is finally beginning to feel better. Or maybe I should phrase that less terrible. The fair is wonderful, but would mean miles and miles of walking and when not walking, standing, so I opted out.

Instead, we did some yard sale-ing and then work in the garden. Our pumpkin vines were pretty much dead from powdery mildew, brought on by the stress of drought, so we harvested them, a mix of New England Pie and Winter Luxury. The Winter Luxury pumpkins have a russetting on the skin, and the NE Pie tend to be smaller and bright orange. We picked a few more tomatoes, including this beautiful Amish Paste, next to my Felco pruners for comparison. They are very large for a paste tomato. We also picked a few ears of multicolored corn, which we grew for fun and fall decor. We hang the prettily-colored ears with the dried husks, and use the stalks by the front door.

And then we looked at the grapes.

There seemed to be a lot. We thought, well, why not. We've been here six years and hadn't harvested any grapes. This year, what with the new grape arbor and what seems to have been a good grape year weatherwise, we should at least do something with them.

I helped, but Dan being taller did more picking, with me emptying the pail. We picked a lot of grapes. They were for the most part, gorgeous. When picked over and washed, we must have had 30 lbs. of grapes --they nearly filled my laundry basket/party tub.

We made juice for grape jelly, 4 batches, using 14 lbs. of grapes, and are in the process now of making quarts of grape juice. At this moment, we have 7 quarts in the canner and are heating the water for the syrup of a second batch of juice. Jelly will be processed tomorrow morning.

I'm not sure I wouldn't have been better off at the Fair.

Great sadness, another chick lost to a hawk

2007-09-15T19:41:00.000-04:00

Friday we lost another chick, Hermoine, to a red tail hawk. We got home just after it happened, and our poor chicks were totally freaked out. They had managed to knock open the gate into the adult chicken's pen, and as if the hawk weren't bad enough, poor Ayla lost a lot of tail feather to one of the chickens (probably Iris).

We eventually managed to catch them and put them back in their pen (after removing what was left of Hermoine),

but they were scared little chickens. They went right into their coop and roosted, all huddled together.

Dan and I felt terrible. Last year, before we had an expanded fenced in area,

we strung twine over the fenced in area to deter birds, as seen in the photo on the left. It appeared to work, but didn't allow us to get in the run, and with our current configuration, we could not string the twine, but had thought the brush along one side of the pen was enough. Had thought.

This morning, I awoke with the solution -- run the twine above our heads. This afternoon, we completed the job. I hope it keeps the hawks away from our poor girls!

And finally, a ripe tomato (I think)

2007-09-13T07:29:00.000-04:00

Wednesday was a red letter day, as I picked my first full-sized ripe tomato from the garden, a Black Krim, seeds purchased on impulse when recommended by another gardener.

According to the Fedco catalog, "Krims are strikingly iridescent purple on the outside, usually with dark green-black shoulders and noticeable catfacing. Interiors are part black, too, with an unusual juicy yet meaty taste and texture, described as having “…a smoky flavor like a good single malt scotch.”"

Also according to the catalog, Krims should be picked when they are "half green and still firm. They are dead ripe and perfectly delicious at that stage." Looking through the tangle of overgrown tomato plants, I wasn't sure if they were ready, but gave it a go, and they were indeed delicious, tangy and complex, but very tomato-ey, and meaty like a good beefsteak ought to be. I ate much of it plain, then chopped the remaining tomato into a Nikki's Salad (named after the originator, a very dear friend), chopped fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. YUM!

There will be plenty for me as Dan announced he didn't like them. Because they aren't red, like tomatoes should be.

AUGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Much needed rain at last

2007-09-10T08:19:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we finally got a bit of rain. Just 1/2 an inch but better than none! The lawn feels like concrete. More showers are predicted today.

An abundance of squash and carrots and....

2007-09-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

I really only intended to take the compost out, but then I thought I'd check for more ripe cherry tomatoes, and the next thing I new, I was loaded down with an abundance of produce. This photo doesn't even include the enormous zucchini I gave the chickens.

I pulled the Mokum carrots and a few of the Rainbow Mix. The Mokums are delicious, and the red carrots in the mix are good too, but the white carrots were a huge pain. The roots were not carrot-like at all, but a wild mass of fingers and the tops frequently broke off. Cross this mix off the list for next year!

I'm going to try a new squash soup recipe later:

Yellow Squash Soup
1/2 cup chopped onion
4 T olive oil
2 large yellow bell pepper
1 1/2 lbs yellow summer squash
3 cloves garlic
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 c half and half or light cream

Sautee the peppers in oil until soft, add squash and garlic, cook covered until squash is softened. Add stock and simmer 5-10 minutes. Purée until smooth, return to pan and reheat until just heated through, adding cream to thin to desired consistency, and season with salt and pepper.

Makes about 5+ cups.

It sounds very mild, but will lend itself to my usual tinkering.

Bush cherries

2007-09-01T11:47:00.000-04:00

I picked the bush cherries from this bush today. This one little bush yielded 1 1/4 lbs of tart cherries.

The other bush also has many berries, but is deep within the garden and the cherries are not as plentiful or ripe -- too much shade, perhaps.

Time to try sour cherry jam, I think.

Ripe tomatoes at last!!

2007-09-01T11:43:00.000-04:00

Finally, ripe, my Sungolds are making me a happy woman. They taste even better than they look.

Corn and Tomato Pie

2007-09-01T11:07:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favorite late summer treats. I adapted it from a recipe by Laurie Colwin, I think it was in Home Cooking. I adapt it just about every time I make it depending on what is ready in the garden. This year, I was dying for it, so I bought tomatoes and corn, as my tomatoes are still not ripe. Sigh.

The pie has a biscuit crust and calls for rolling out the dough into 2 discs for the top and bottom crust. I use James Beard's cream biscuits from my Fannie Farmer cookbook, and when I'm lazy, just drop them on top of the filling like a cobbler. This particular iteration included dill in the biscuits. The filling consists of sliced tomatoes, lightly salted and drained briefly on paper towels, fresh corn cooked and cut off the cob, and basil or some other flavorful herb (like dill). I added zucchini 'cause I had some.

I usually make it the day after we have corn on the cob. In this instance, I layered the ingredients and added a sprinkling of cheddar cheese between the layers. Oh, and I also lightly sprinkle each layer with flour. I think it would be excellent with ricotta cheese and lots of black pepper. The original recipe called for mayo thinned with lemon juice but I don't like mayo so I skip that option. I find the juice from the tomatoes is enough. If your tomatoes are really sweet you could add a squirt of lemon to brighten the flavor. Bake in a 400 F oven until hot and bubbly with browned biscuits. It makes a great leftover lunch, too.

We're famous!

2007-08-28T12:21:00.000-04:00

My friend Herb Wilson mentioned Henbogle blog in his birding column in the Maine Sunday Telegram this past Sunday, writing about the hair of the dog and the titmouse, when a tufted titmouse was pulling hair from Fishy for her nest.

I thought I'd post the links to make it easier for people to find the photos and video.

A photo of one of a titmouse in the nest box can be seen here, and photos of a disappointed titmouse attempting to collect hair from the recently clipped Fishy here. Fishy and the Titmouse, the video, can be seen here. Fishy the lion dog can be seen here.

Who'd have thunk ol' Fishy would be responsible for making Henbogle famous!